Good morning. Today is the beginning and the end. Today's the beginning of our fall practice period. I'm going to have to depend a lot on you today. I'm tired and my head is quite fuzzy. So I don't know what will happen today, but we'll see. So today is the beginning of our fall practice period, which is a wonderful and auspicious event. We're going to be able to sit more regularly. As a matter of fact, Thursday we said goodbye

[01:07]

and we're going to say goodbye to you too. I'm sorry. But we're going to have a great time. Do you prefer Abbas? Our Abbas is also leaving tomorrow. Are you one of the mice? Anyway, we sent them away and I hadn't quite experienced it in that way quite before. Some people made breakfast for them, they ate before the rest of us did, and then between 7 or 7.30 they kind of were bundled up in these few cars and were sent off. And I got kind of teary about the whole thing, much to my surprise, because I think I value so much what they're doing. They're going off to our monastery to sit a lot. As a matter of fact, as we speak right now, this is

[02:15]

the beginning of their second day of a five-day tangaria, which means they really just sit and they get up only to go to the bathroom and to go to sleep at night. It's doable for those of you who are considering it later. It's quite doable, but it is kind of a tunnel that you go through. And when you're finished with the tunnel, you're very much at Tassajara. You've physically incorporated the rhythms and the sense of being there, and you've dropped a lot of your life that you've left. And a number of those people, in order to even go in the first place, had to let go of huge chunks of who they thought they were, their relationship or a job for a while. It's a big thing. They're going because they feel this is the time in their practice where they need actually, not just want to, but need to sit, to meditate, to be with their own mind and body for long periods of time, to study who they think they are, and to be free of that small, encumbered, twisted,

[03:29]

painful, sometimes joyous, sense of a separate self. Can you hear me when I turn my head that way? Can you hear me now? Is that better? Yeah, that's better? Okay. Anyway, so they're sitting, doing that, and also, by the way, I just thought I'd mention for those of you who are staying here and not going to such a thing, it occurs to me that we're going to offer, during this practice period, another little four-day session in October, which is a nice little added event

[04:39]

that I would recommend those of you who are interested to sign up for that. Why? Well, because not everybody has to sit. I don't recommend it for everybody, but some of you do. And if you want to really seriously transform your understanding of who you are in your life, you do need to see quite clearly what this self is, and to see through it, and then incorporate that into your daily life. And the easiest way to do that is by meditation, sitting meditation. It is actually the easiest way. So, today, some of you are going to be doing that.

[05:44]

I am hesitating for a moment because those of you who can't take chunks out of your life to do this kind of intense sitting, I encourage those people of whom I was one for a long time if you feel like it, and it works for your schedule, just sit regularly at home once in the morning, even for twenty minutes, is good, is very good. I used to, my favorite time was when I came back from teaching school, I would sit in the afternoon when I got back, just for like twenty minutes, and then the day would kind of slough off and I could really be home at night. All right. Let's see. So, who are you anyway? And who are we? And is that the same question or a different question?

[06:49]

And what is the relationship of we and I? This fall, we're going to study a text called the Sandokai, which I want to talk just a teeny-weeny bit about today. The title of the text, other than the Sandokai, is called The Harmony of Difference and Sameness. Suzuki Roshi, our founder, said that each, this is a quote, each existence depends on something else. Each existence depends on something else. Strictly speaking, there are no separate individual existences. There are just many names for one existence. Sometimes people put stress on oneness, but this is not our understanding. We do not emphasize any point in particular, even oneness. Oneness is valuable, but variety is also wonderful. Ignoring variety, people emphasize

[07:56]

the one absolute existence, but this is a one-sided understanding. In this understanding, there's a gap between variety and oneness, but oneness and variety are the same thing. So oneness should be appreciated in each existence. I answered the question, did you notice? I didn't mean to answer any questions for you today, so I've already made a mistake. It's lucky when you make mistakes, because then you get to, it's like a little bit of a dropping off of some of yourself, and if you can stay in that place for a while, it's very good for us to make mistakes. We can learn a lot there, more than if we think we know something. I'm not reading my text. We're always falling off into one side or the other, either thinking that we are

[08:59]

different and that's a terrific thing, and it is, or thinking we're oneness, and that's a terrific thing too, but if we get caught in either side, that's not the right understanding. So should I tell you what the right understanding is? No. But I've already told you, Suzuki Roshi already told you, that we know we're oneness and difference at the very same time must be the ground from which we relate to ourselves and other people. If we don't, we get angry a lot, and if we don't, we get graspy a lot, we get needy. Both are true all the time, different, same, different, same. Well, it looks like I'm going to have to read. I apologize.

[09:59]

When we see other people as separate, as objects of our desire or repulsion, we live in a gap that is the condition of suffering for ourselves and others. That gap is just a conceptual thought we believe to be real. We believe the illusion that we're separate. This separate object is always threatening. Even when we have our object of desire, that relief, actually the relief is the relief of satisfaction. It's really interesting. It's not so much that we want the object, it's that we don't want to feel this leaning. We don't want to feel the wanting. We don't want to feel this lack. So that when we have something, that's what drives us to grasp, and then when we get it, it's only good for just a moment, because then we're afraid we're going to lose it, and then the wanting comes right back up again. And it comes from this fundamental lack that we

[11:05]

feel, this fundamental dissatisfaction of our lives, which comes from feeling separate. That's why we have to know clearly separation and difference, and yet break through those differences and understand the emptiness, the truth of the emptiness of everything, which is also the same thing to say the truth of our connectedness with everything. But anyway, when we see difference and we attach to that difference, that's when suffering comes for yourself and for other people. And this is kind of what I want to talk about today, because the Sandokai, the text of the Sandokai, works really well in terms of this diversity business that we talk about so much in our culture right now. I saw a movie not long ago called Ma Vie en Rose. Have some of you seen that movie? It's good, isn't it? I had no idea.

[12:15]

It's a lovely movie. It's about a boy around ten, something like that, a young boy around ten, who likes to wear dresses. And the movie itself is done really well. It's done with kind of a lightness of heart almost. It's a lot of fantasy kind of images, sort of floating things. The colors are really more than they really are, you know, really vibrant, colorful things. So it goes back and forth. The subject itself is quite... I was crying by the end of it, but it's very light. It's like innocent. This innocent young boy just likes to get dressed up in dresses. And the community, at first his family and everybody kind of accepted him, although thought he was, you know, sometimes a little bit too much, but basically they loved the boy. But the community didn't accept who this boy was. Just who he was, that's all. Just who he was.

[13:19]

Nothing fancy. Just who he was. And they made it very difficult for the family, and eventually the parents kind of succumbed to the pressure. The man lost his job, the woman was embarrassed in various kinds of ways, and they were forced to move, and they blamed the kid. And the kid was put in this awful position of choosing between himself and his parents, the love of his parents. Eventually when he moved, he was playing and somebody came toward him and wanted to play baseball and stuff like that. And at first you think it's kind of a boy, but it's a tomboy, you know, it's really a girl. And the mother of that young girl helped the mother of the young boy, who liked to wear dresses, understand that it's perfectly okay for everybody to be exactly who they are. And the end of the story, it ends quite happily, but I guess maybe that's why I cried so much. Because so often it doesn't, you know.

[14:21]

Anyway, it's our practice to understand how concepts separate us, and how we, and how they lack substance. That's oneness, that's emptiness. Like the concept of race. Difference is there and we name it, but we know the label only represents some distinction and is not by any means the deepest truth. As you know by now, I spent some time in Africa teaching music. When I came back, when I was there, something that I realized while I was there was that my face, my eyes, no longer saw color. I didn't see color, I just saw people. And I didn't notice exactly when that was happening, I was just having a nice time and so on. But when I came back to the United States, it's excruciating. That's when I really understood, slowly, painfully slowly, my eyes began again to see the color of people

[15:23]

before I saw who they were. And it was painful to me. So, look around the room for a minute. Go ahead and look. Be courageous. Really, really look. And see if you can look with no judgments. Just see if you can enjoy difference. That you cannot even enjoy it, but just wonder at the variety that we are. And if you don't know people, you know, you don't have to judge. Sometimes when you know them, you start judging them. But even then, in the 60s, we tried to emphasize oneness, and it was a mistake. It was this mistake. We worked really hard at, what do you call it now, integration? We worked really hard

[16:27]

at integration, thinking that we were all the same. And it's true, we are all the same, but we forgot about the difference part. And that part of it was a mistake. So it kind of swung the other way, seriously. Swung the other way. Which is also okay. See, the whole point is that both of them are true, all the time. It's just that we have to see things that they are identical. Difference and sameness are identical, and we have to see both all the time. It's like a flat... your category is to say it goes kind of like that. So everyone and everything is deserving of respect, including ourselves, to ourselves. We all deserve to be seen, heard, and understood. Differences enrich us as a society, as a community, as an individual, and we must know how strong our feelings of hate and love are,

[17:30]

so we can not have those be the primary focus of how we live. We practice noticing that we're thinking dualistically, and we simply don't attach to the content of those dualistic thoughts. It really helps if you can walk in somebody else's shoes for even just a moment. So, we're going to practice noticing that we're thinking dualistically, and we simply don't attach to the content of those dualistic thoughts. I know, Paul, if you mind... I hope you don't mind me saying so, but Paul is thinking of offering to the community a street session of some sort. I don't know, he hasn't told me yet how it might look, but it's... I understand that it's quite an intense

[18:37]

thing to do. It's a kind of a taste of what homelessness might be like, a little bit. You can taste that. And I remember one time I was in New Mexico and I went to a concert of Tibetan chanting, and in the middle of the concert there was a break, and all the women, of course, went to the bathroom. And there were only two stalls for maybe 75 women. And I was standing on line, about halfway through the line, and the person in front of me was a woman in a wheelchair. And from my point of view it took a really long time to get to where the stalls were, because I had to really go to the bathroom. And I was imagining that so did she.

[19:38]

And when we got to the door, it was like a door, and then there were two stalls straight in front. When we got to the door I looked, and it never occurred to me about that she was in a wheelchair, I just happened to notice she was in a wheelchair, and probably had to go to the bathroom as much as I did, but that's as far as my understanding went. When we got to the door and the two stalls were in front of both of us, I could see that the stalls were narrow, and her wheelchair was not going to fit in. And I just watched. I was the one right behind her, right? So I watched. And she opened the door, she tried to get close as she could and opened the door. And I don't remember if someone was helping or not, I forgot that part because I was so struck by this other part. And she had to keep the door open while she got off of the wheelchair, sat on the toilet, and went to the bathroom. And ever since then, I am for whatever kind of adjustment needs to be made for anybody.

[20:49]

Because just for a moment I was given the opportunity to walk in her shoes, just a teeny-weeny bit. And I felt the connectedness then with that person. So, a rose is different from a petunia, and that's all. A tomato is a tomato and has its place. We're all needed to be exactly as we are, and then what we're asked to do by Zen is to stand up there. It's not easy, especially if we're different. We're asked to stand up there as happy, as sad, as a woman or a man, as ill or healthy,

[21:58]

smart, dumb, gay, straight, rich, poor, red, brown, tan, beige, black, or pinkish-white. It is all as it is. It is incredibly mysterious and wonderful in the sense of awe. Non-discriminating wisdom is not that you don't discriminate. Non-discriminating wisdom is that we discriminate, but that everything is value equal. Last June I went to teach something about the Doan, ringing of bells, at another sangha,

[23:02]

not this sangha, a different sangha, and I didn't know any of the people there. So I was just, you know, relating to everybody, and there were men in the room and women in the room. And then it turned out the teacher of that sangha drove me back, and as we were riding back, she asked me how it was relating to this particular man that I was relating to. And then she told me, as I was telling her how that was, that this man had over the last four years changed from a woman to a man. I didn't know. I was doing all my usual how I relate to men stuff. The most interesting thing that this person, the man, said to his teacher as he was going through this change was that inside he was the same,

[24:07]

but women related to him differently, changed, and men related to him differently, because of what he looked like on the outside. Anyway, so we all have our individual karma, and that's where we need to stand up, no matter what it is. And the thing is, it's easier to stand up in that karma. As a matter of fact, the first turning of practice is when finally you don't any longer blame anybody else for any of it. First, you have to be angry. It's legitimate. I mean, things happen, right? And they are other people's faults. But we forget that. At some point as an adult,

[25:13]

you accept everything that has happened to you in your life. You were part of it, right? You accept all of it as your karma now, and it's your responsibility now to grow up as an adult in that place. That's the first turning of responsibility. And then we have to do the work, the hard work, of really accepting who we are, really accepting who we are. We are selfish, and so on and so on and so on. And then little by little, as we sit and meditate, as we study and study, study just by watching. That's the meditation. You just sit there and you watch. You study that self, and little by little by little you see the emptiness or the sameness or the dependently co-risen nature of who we are. And you can deeply accept your own pain,

[26:19]

and once you deeply accept your own pain, you accept everybody else's pain, and you don't any longer want in the slightest way ever at all anymore to cause anybody the slightest bit of suffering. Because you finally understand your own pain, and you know that nobody wants to suffer, and everybody wants to be happy. And we realize that realizing the connectedness or the emptiness or the sameness of who we are. So to do that work we must meditate. It's the easiest way to see how the mind works. We do that over and over again until we finally release our fearful holding to this apparent

[27:26]

self we so cherish, and fall into the source. This fear that we have is not of the heart, it's of the mind. So we fall into the heart, we fall into the source, and we swim and we drown in it until life presses in, and then we see through that also, and we're back again into the mundane world. But this time we live in a world with wonder and gratitude, not one and not two, but just this. We're at play in the world, and everything then is vibrant. Like Trungpa said once, garbage is really garbage. It's not bliss. Bliss is bliss, and garbage is garbage.

[28:27]

But garbage is wonderful. It makes compost. You never know, you know. The suffragette, Ms. Stanton, Martin Luther King, Harvey Milk, Siddhartha Bodhisattva, were so great because they held our dream to return to connectedness while appreciating difference, feeling rich enough to give the love and respect we actually all can offer each other and ourselves. It's in there already. You don't even have to work at it. You just have to drop the shields, drop the sense of separation, drop that belief, that fear, that protectedness that we need for a while. It's okay. But eventually you have to renounce that. We're not little separate boxes on the hillside.

[29:33]

We are also the great earth those boxes rest on, and everything else we see and hear. Our little pains and privileges are surrounded and breathed through with a light of universal nature, which is each one of us. It is beyond all dualities. It is beyond all dualities. It is silent and still, and there is nothing to say about it at all. So we're sitting today, we're walking, we're listening, we're just living. We're living Dogen's understanding that practice and realization are the same. So sit well, or walk well, or do whatever you're doing today well. Plant yourself like a tree on your cushion, the hips stable and solid,

[30:37]

and the trunk reaching up to the sky. Breathe into your body so that there's space in between each vertebra, and allow your head to balance carefully on your shoulders. Let your breath suffuse your mind and body. Let all things bubble up and let them go. Let all tension and self-concern drop away. Maybe don't be bothered by any of it. Simply watch the passing show, and in the deepest sense, what of you is many and same?

[31:39]

We do this today as a gift for ourselves, and for the benefit of all being, that we all may be happy and free of suffering. Thank you.

[32:05]

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